American Airlines Leads U.S. Carriers in Lengthy Delays

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American Airlines is emerging as the U.S. carrier where a long delay is most likely to turn into an all‑day ordeal, with new data showing it now has the longest average waits for significantly late flights and four‑figure counts of major holdups across its three largest hubs.

Data Shows American at the Back of the Pack on Long Delays

Recent analysis of U.S. flight performance indicates that American Airlines is currently the country’s worst performer when a delay stretches beyond routine disruption. A study using AirAdvisor’s AirData, based on 2025 schedules and released in mid‑2026, found that American recorded the longest average wait time among U.S. airlines once a flight was delayed by at least one hour.

According to that review, passengers on American flights delayed 60 minutes or more waited an average of about 141 minutes before departure, a figure that outpaces competing large carriers and many ultra‑low‑cost rivals. A companion analysis focusing on very long disruptions found that American’s average delay for flights that ran at least three hours late approached six hours, placing the airline at the bottom of the list for 180‑minute plus delays.

These averages translate into four‑figure numbers of disrupted services. AirAdvisor’s long‑delay rankings, which drew on nearly 25,000 delayed flights across U.S. carriers in 2025, show that American accounted for one of the highest tallies of three‑hour‑plus delays in the country. Travel industry commentators note that such figures mean not just missed connections but lost workdays and vacations for thousands of passengers each year.

The findings add a quantitative layer to a picture that many travelers already recognize anecdotally: when a significant delay happens on American, it is more likely than on rival carriers to turn into a protracted wait at the gate or on the tarmac.

Biggest Pain Points: Dallas Fort Worth, Charlotte and Phoenix

American’s performance problems appear to be concentrated at its three primary hubs: Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, Charlotte Douglas International Airport and Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Industry analyses that break out delays by airport show that these locations regularly feature among the U.S. facilities with the largest pools of long‑delayed flights.

Dallas Fort Worth, American’s largest hub and the base for a significant share of its employees, has repeatedly been highlighted as a pressure point. During Winter Storm Fern in January 2026, coverage in outlets such as Forbes and Reuters described cascading disruptions after freezing conditions turned runways and roadways into “a skating rink,” shuttering large portions of the operation and triggering extensive delays across the carrier’s network. Subsequent federal Air Travel Consumer Reports listed multiple American flights into and out of Dallas among the tarmac delays exceeding three hours early in 2026.

Charlotte Douglas, another core American hub, has been identified in long‑delay rankings as one of the U.S. airports where extended waits are particularly common. Analysts attribute this to a mix of heavy connecting traffic, summer thunderstorm exposure and tightly timed schedules that leave little slack when something goes wrong. Similar dynamics are reported at Phoenix, where American’s hub operation has grown in recent years, increasing congestion on peak travel days.

Travel‑data specialists say that taken together, these three airports generate four‑figure counts of long delays for the airline over the course of a year, making them focal points in any discussion about American’s reliability and its exposure when weather or air‑traffic constraints arise.

Weather Shocks Expose Operational Weaknesses

Weather events have been a major driver of the longest delays on American, but recent disruptions suggest that operational resilience also plays a key role in how quickly the airline recovers. During Winter Storm Fern, which hit in late January 2026, publicly available union communications cited problems reaching crew scheduling, long waits for hotel arrangements and difficulty reassigning stranded staff as factors that prolonged the disruption beyond the initial weather window.

Federal Department of Transportation data for early 2026 list multiple American flights near or above the three‑hour tarmac threshold, with several of the longest waits originating or ending at its hub airports. Consumer advocates note that while all major airlines suffer when winter storms or summer thunderstorms roll through, carriers with dense banks of connecting flights at a small number of hubs are especially vulnerable to system‑wide gridlock.

Analysts also point to the lingering impacts of rapid post‑pandemic growth on staffing and infrastructure. American has scheduled aggressively for the 2026 summer season, with plans to carry about 75 million customers on 750,000 flights between late May and early September. That expansion increases the risk that any local weather shock at a key hub will ripple across the network, especially if ground handling, call centers and maintenance are already operating at or near capacity.

In this environment, even routine thunderstorms over North Texas or the Carolinas can translate into hours‑long waits for customers flying through Dallas or Charlotte. Once flights are delayed beyond three hours, the knock‑on effects can last well into the next day, further inflating the long‑delay averages tracked by independent analysts.

How American Compares With Rival U.S. Carriers

Despite its size, American is not the only airline struggling with reliability. Upgraded Points and other travel research firms have highlighted JetBlue as the carrier with the highest share of delayed departures during some peak travel periods. Southwest, meanwhile, has faced its own disruptions, including a series of operational snarls in 2026 that produced hundreds of late flights in a single day across the country.

What sets American apart in the latest AirAdvisor ranking is not necessarily how often its flights are delayed, but how long the most serious disruptions last. Where a rival carrier might resolve a three‑hour delay in roughly four or five hours, American’s long‑delay flights are now averaging closer to six hours, according to the 2025 data. That gap compounds the impact on passengers, particularly those relying on tight connections or traveling for time‑sensitive events.

Travel‑industry observers suggest that American’s heavy reliance on a few mega‑hubs magnifies this problem. When disruptions strike Dallas Fort Worth, Charlotte or Phoenix, the airline has fewer alternative routings than carriers with more dispersed point‑to‑point networks. As a result, rebooking options can quickly dry up, leaving customers stranded as the hours tick by and pushing more flights into the three‑hour‑plus category.

Delta and United, by contrast, have recently reported improvements in their on‑time performance metrics and have not featured as prominently in the longest‑delay averages. While both still experience notable disruption events, particularly during summer storms and holiday peaks, current data suggest that their worst delays are modestly shorter and somewhat less concentrated at a small cluster of airports.

What Travelers Can Expect This Summer

With the 2026 peak travel season underway, consumers flying American through Dallas Fort Worth, Charlotte or Phoenix may face an elevated risk of extended delays, particularly during late‑afternoon and evening bank periods when traffic is heaviest. Analysts advise travelers to treat early‑morning departures as a hedge against rolling disruptions that build throughout the day.

Passenger‑rights specialists recommend practical steps for those who cannot avoid American’s hubs, including booking longer connection windows, monitoring incoming aircraft on flight‑tracking apps and staying alert for the first signs of schedule changes. In some cases, same‑day flight changes to alternative routings, even with additional stops, can reduce the risk of becoming ensnared in a multi‑hour delay.

Regulators, meanwhile, continue to monitor long‑delay trends through monthly Air Travel Consumer Reports, which list tarmac waits of three hours or more and track cancellation and on‑time performance across the industry. While these reports do not single out specific hubs as “worst” performers, the underlying data provide a detailed picture of where disruptions are most acute and which airlines are struggling to contain them.

For now, the latest independent analyses place American Airlines at the center of the long‑delay story in the United States, with its three major hubs generating some of the largest clusters of extended waits. As demand for air travel continues to rise into late 2026, the carrier’s ability to improve reliability at Dallas Fort Worth, Charlotte and Phoenix will be closely watched by both regulators and the millions of travelers who pass through its gates each year.